Relive the classic Everquest MMORPG Gaming Experience as it was in 1999 and onward. Project 1999 is a free to play Emulated Everquest Server giving Players the opportunity to experience Classic EQ Once again, currently in the Velious expansion and a max level of 60, with the look and feel of the old interface and several modifications making game mechanics similar to how the game used to be. Project 1999 is the best and most popular classic Everquest experience.

October marks the 10th year anniversary of Project 1999; March of this year also marked the 20th anniversary of Everquest. The intent of our project was always to restore the original classic experience of Everquest from launch through Velious, and our most recent patch was the last major milestone in that effort. It seems appropriate now that we relive through that timeline on a proper, fresh classic experience.

Introducing Project 1999: Green, to be released on October 25, 2019 (Early Afternoon Eastern Time)

Project 1999 Green is a new PVE server without any patches or expansions enabled upon release. Old-style mechanics and drops will be enabled, including legacy items such as Guise of the Deceiver and Manastone. The server will then progress through all patches on the same timeline as Everquest's original launch, all the way up to the last patch in Velious. This means that based on an October 2019 launch date, the following are a few major timeline changes:

* January 2020: Plane of Fear
* April 2020: Plane of Hate
* May 2020: Temple of Solusek Ro opens / Legacy items cease to drop
* August 2020: Plane of Sky
* November 2020: Ruins of Kunark
* April 2021: Epics
* July 2021: Scars of Velious
* The above list is not exhaustive; each month will have unlocks of patches from March 1999 to December 2001.

Green Lifetime
The green server will, at a time yet to be decided, eventually merge into blue and start over again. This merge will not happen until at least 6 months after the last patch in velious (No earlier than January 2023).

Blue Server
The blue server will always be open and remain at its current point in the timeline, with possibly some custom content being added to keep things interesting in a 'classically inspired' style.

Multiple Green Servers
Many players have expressed concern about the population that a Green server may bring, and that we may need to open more than one server to satisfy that interest. At this time we are not planning to open a second server, but we will address and evaluate this as needed. We are also not ruling out new servers before Green has reached the end of Velious. However, servers powerful enough to handle thousands of players are not easily acquired for a project like ours, which brings us to our next topic..

Donations
Much of our hardware is aging and becoming unreliable. We will also need to consider the resources needed to host potentially thousands of players on a regular basis across Green, Blue, and whatever else is to come. We are currently in the process of procurring new equipment, but as always donations are greatly appreciated. As a reminder, this project operates off of donations alone, and donations do not go to anything other than covering the expenses of equipment and hosting. None of the staff receive any monetary compensation for the work we do, as it is all strictly volunteer.

Lists
We would like players to have their fair shot at obtaining limited time items, and to that end we are devising a system for a server-kept 'list' of players in line to loot said item. Upon entering a zone or camp area, you will be able to enter a command to add yourself to the list for this item. While your name is on that list you must remain in the zone or camp vicinity until your name reaches the top (You'll have a limited time to re-enter the zone or area in case of disconnection). Once your name is up, and the item drops, you will automatically be granted exclusive permission to loot that item from the corpse. We hope this system will prevent the practice of passing camps and/or items to friends, corpsing additional items, and so on. We believe this should closely mimic how the majority of camps were handled in classic Everquest, and is the best solution to mechanically enforce it. More details about this system will be announced prior to launch.

Development
Development will not stop for Green and Blue. The project will continue to make adjustments to fix bugs and restore classic functionality as it becomes possible to do so. There may also be things that weren't properly 'era locked' when implemented that may need to be adjusted. We will also be considering additional content for Blue that may be custom in nature, but adhering to a classic feel.
Raid Rules
The CSR Team will be addressing raiding concerns in a separate, new thread in the Raid Discussion forum. Most of the raid rules will stay as they are, with First to Engage being the primary mechanism. There may be special considerations similar to Blue, such as Plane of Sky. This is still being discussed internally.

Play Nice Policy
Staff will be on hand to watch over the launch to make sure players are abiding by the Play Nice Policy. Many zones will be crowded, and we expect groups to stick to their camps and not be dipping into camps that another group is camping. The 25 Mob AE Limit will be in place, but we will evaluate this and change as necessary.

Guide Applications
If you intend to play on Green or not, we will be recruiting more Guides. If interested, please post (or reply) a thread in the Guide Application forum. Make sure to follow the template in the sticky, and also please mention if you intend to play Green, Blue, Both, or Neither.

Boxing
As usual with all Project 1999 servers, boxing will NOT be allowed. However, as is currently the case with Blue and Red, you may play one character per server at the same time.

Character Names
You will not be able to create a character on Green with the same name as a character on Blue, unless you are on the same account that owns that character on Blue. We may also bring the server up early to allow character creations ahead of time. We will try to announce this as much in advance as we can.

Beta Server
We intend to hold a brief Public Beta as soon as the hardware is in place for the Green server.

I wanted to take a minute to address the backlash regarding our recent UI changes. Namely, the removal of the Pet Window and Secondary Hotbars.

When I implemented the recent window blocking, I went down the list of all windows in the game and checked off everything that was not strictly in existence before Luclin. Since I had found a method that is essentially a 'parent function' of every window, I could disable everything right in one spot. There wasn't particularly a discussion internally regarding the sudden removal of these items that people had gotten used to over so many years. Not that any discussion would have resulted in a different outcome, the majority of the development staff vehemently support the removal of non-classic functionality.

When it came to the enforcement (or lack thereof) on Custom UI's, I did make a concious decision to limit that to Green, for multiple reasons: It was, in my opinion, a much more significant change; Custom UI's are in widespread usage; and most importantly, I considered Blue to be at a point in the timeline where Custom UI was not too far away, being only one patch behind Luclin release.

Having now evaluated both decisions, it did not make sense to me, personally, to continue to allow Custom UI's on blue, but not allow the Pet window, given that both changes occurred on the very same patch. Therefore, I am making a decision to re-enable the Pet window. There will be one caveat, however, and that is you will no longer be able to use the Pet window buttons while casting a spell. Also, be aware that this window will be disabled on Green, along with all Custom UI's.

Now, regarding the Secondary hotbars. EverQuest did not have secondary hotbars until September of 2005. There is no way that we can support something that far outside of the scope of our project. These will remain disabled.

I also want to address the recent issues with false positive anti-virus flags on our files. As I've explained in the past, we run our Custom DLL through a layer of obfuscation using a program called Themida. This program alters several aspects of the code to make it significantly harder for someone to reverse engineer and disassemble it. The reason we do this is that it contains anti-cheat mechanisms. Our files alone do not flag any anti-virus, and have a complete 0 detection on VirusTotal. Therefore it is entirely the Themida protection that triggers these flags. There are two reasons for this. First, the anti virus programs can't read our files and determine what they are doing, so they are flagging it out of an abundance of caution. Secondly, there are many viruses out there that DO use Themida to mask what their virus is doing, and many Anti Viruses have opted to completely blacklist any file protected by it. I want to reiterate something I've said in the past that remains true: Our Anti-Cheat system does not send any information to our servers about the files and programs on your computer unless they are Everquest files, or have interacted with the Everquest client.

With all of that said, with this latest file pack, I've reverted back to an older version of Themida that should hopefully result in less false positives. I will continue to investigate alternatives to prevent this, such as Certificate Code Signing.

November 2001 / December 2001
Blue and Red are now officially on the last point of our timeline. Further patches may still provide additional classic changes.

Code

Rogean: [Oct2001] Modified damage tables both Pre and Post this Era for all level ranges to account for changes made in that patch. Previously, On P99, Warriors, Rangers, Monks, and Rogues were on the same damage tables from 51 to 60, which should not be the case. We have separated Rogues, Monks, and then the rest to their own damage tables for Pre and Post Oct2001. All of these classes except the Rogue received a slight damage table decrease relative to their previous-p99 values. Shadowknights, Paladins, and Bards will see a damage increase appropriate for Post Oct2001 changes.

Rogean: [Oct2001] Monks can now Triple Attack, and now have a minimum damage for Flying Kick.